Get Complicated: The Effects of Complexity on Conversations over Potentially Intractable Moral Conflicts

Katharina G Kugler,Peter T Coleman

doi:10.1111/ncmr.12192

Abstract

AbstractConflicts over important moral differences can divide communities and trap people in destructive spirals of enmity that become intractable. But these conflicts can also be managed constructively. Two laboratory studies investigating the underlying social–psychological dynamics of more tractable versus intractable moral conflicts are presented, which tested a core proposition derived from a dynamical systems theory of intractable conflict. It portrays more intractable conflicts as those, which have lost the complexity inherent to more constructive social relations and have collapsed into overly simplified, closed patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that resist change. Employing our Difficult Conversations Lab paradigm in which participants engage in genuine discussions over moral differences, we found that higher levels of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral complexity were associated with more tractable conversations. Whereas in a pilot study we examined conflicts that naturally became more/less intractable, in our main experiment, high versus low levels of cognitive complexity were induced.

Highlights

Today, the USA and much of the globe are seeing unprecedented levels of political, moral, and cultural polarization, leading to spikes in violence and hate crimes among citizens, governmental dysfunction, and an incapacity to respond effectively to shared national and international threats such as pandemics, climate change, and economic meltdowns
Employing our Difficult Conversations Lab paradigm in which participants engage in genuine discussions over moral differences, we found that higher levels of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral complexity were associated with more tractable conversations
How do some disputes become trapped in such intransigence? We suggest that one answer may lie in the complexity of the disputants’ underlying psychological dynamics

Summary

Introduction

The USA and much of the globe are seeing unprecedented levels of political, moral, and cultural polarization, leading to spikes in violence and hate crimes among citizens, governmental dysfunction, and an incapacity to respond effectively to shared national and international threats such as pandemics, climate change, and economic meltdowns. The research on addressing protracted conflict and polarization is extensive, our understanding of their causes and remedies remains fragmented and piecemeal. Salvi III walked into two women’s clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts, shot and killed two women at point-blank range and wounded five others. In what was one of the most traumatic events of the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice conflict in the USA, Salvi reportedly pronounced to one of the. The research draws on a dissertation completed by Katharina G. Kugler and Coleman dying women: “That’s what you get.

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